Dear Kalena…
As I am submitting my site to directories as part of my link building campaign, I go back to some of the ones I submitted to 3 or 4 months ago and can see my info/link on these directories. However, when I check on Google WebMaster or Yahoo Site Explorer, these links are not listed as incoming links.
Can you tell me why that is?
Yen
Dear Yen…
There could be a number of reasons for this.
It’s not uncommon for some directories utilise the ‘nofollow’ tag, or use redirects or javascripts to link to your site. If any of these techniques have been applied, the link won’t be shown in the Webmaster / Site Explorer tools.
Some directories are very low quality, excessively employ reciprocal linking, sell links and/or link-out to bad neighbourhoods – if you’ve got a link from one of these directories, the link won’t pass any value and also may not be displayed in the link checking tools either.
Then there are the directories that are really big with hundreds/thousands of categories and sub-categories (and if those categories are not updated on a regular basis), then there’s also a very good chance that the spiders may not have crawled deeply enough to even find your link.
While submitting to a few of the more trusted directories isn’t a bad thing, my advice would be to adjust your link building approach.
Spend more time building relationships and trying to get a few really good, relevant links from well trusted sites instead of submitting to a bunch of average directories that most likely don’t pass much real link value.
Hope this helps!
Peter Newsome
SiteMost SEO Brisbane
I understand what you are saying, but can you explain further how to go about building good relationships and relavent links with trusted sites when your own site is new, and could be considered nor worthy of being linked to.
Thanks for any input you can give me.
Some directories do not want the time spent on them, presently google has devalued directory that the links has less or no value, though some are still good for human traffic which are usually targeted.
Though it usually takes search engines months to re-evaluate incoming links, so if you do a backlink check today, there are likely links that are going into your site that haven’t yet been calculated in.
Tony – relationships can be built in a lot of different ways.
Take my guest post contributions to Ask-Kalena.com – I had chatted online with Kalena a number of times and then a few months later we met-up at a conference. This was the start of our geeky, online SEO friendship. When she was looking for guest bloggers, I offered to help and as we knew each other (and I had demonstrated I know a few things about SEO)… here I am.
Each time I guest post, I have the privilege of adding a link from this well trusted SEO blog back to my own site.
Now, this example is quite unique… but the main things to remember are:
1. find people in your industry that you admire and respect
2. contact them and try and create some type of dialogue (not with the intention of gaining anything from them, but just to connect)
3. Provide something of value – be it your useful insights, knowledge, assistance… etc. etc.
Once you’ve developed a professional friendship like this, you’ll be amazed at the doors that can open and the linking opportunity that may follow.
But it all takes time and effort and none of this is achieved by sending generic spammy link request emails.